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I was thrilled and slightly horrified last week to discover that our local drugstore was now selling Huggies in a faux-denim pattern, with trompe l’oeil seams, back pockets and signs of denim distress. The diapers had already caused some controversy when ABC refused to air its commercial – a toddler pictured as a man-about-town dressed in a button-down Oxford shirt and denim diapers getting ogled by the ladies and climbing into a convertible – because it aired the word “pooping” on screen. The hypocrisy here is frankly hilarious, considering that the ABC program “Grey’s Anatomy” has used the word “douche” not in the medical sense, but as a pejorative put-down, and a character on the 1990’s ABC program “NYPD Blue” routinely used the word with its popular pairing, “bag.” Compared to that, what’s wrong with a little poop?

Of course, I bought the diapers for my 13-month-old. They’re perfect for summer. I can dump him in the sandbox in a T-shirt and his faux-denim diapers and he looks as if he’s properly dressed. (Yes, he wears sunblock and a hat. No, I don’t let him eat the sand. And ladies, save your e-mails — I gently place him in the sandbox.) But there is something slightly dark about the idea of trying to dress your toddler like a chic grown-up man. As a nation, we’ve become preoccupied with the notion of infants assuming adult roles. I have fortysomething friends who will stop a telephone conversation with the words: “Wait, hold on, I have to watch this E*Trade commercial.” Pause. “Okay, Shankapotamus, I can talk again.”

Lately, there’s a collective form of magical thinking going on, in which our infants wear Oxford shirts and trim denim jeans, master the computer, trade stocks online that will somehow guarantee that one day they will not only be able to pay for their own college tuition but also keep us in a granny apartment over the garage. Conversely, adults want to relive their childhoods. A recent AT&T commercial features a harassed-looking fortyish guy looking warmly at his mobile device as Gene Wilder sings “Pure Imagination” from “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Giant cartoon creatures climb through the city streets in the background. And what, after all, is the reason for an adult T-shirt, like the ones made by Three Dots, with extra-long sleeves that drape far below the wrist? The wearer instantly returns to the days when shirts were too big, when she was, in fact, a child.

The line between adulthood and infancy continues to blur, perhaps because of our national rates of obesity. People swollen with fat look like giant babies, the lines and wrinkles pressed from their faces. Or, perhaps it’s the recession, which has uprooted millions of Americans from their jobs, leaving men and women in their 30s and 40s unemployed for years at a stretch. They may want to look at infants as young, capable adults, full of the promise and ambition they will never be allowed to exercise.

In either case, here is my prediction for the next trend in infant wear: Faux pin-stripe suits with lunchboxes that look like briefcases.